Frases de Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein
Fecha de nacimiento: 3. Febrero 1874
Fecha de muerte: 27. Julio 1946
Otros nombres:Gertruda Steinová,Gertruda Stein
Gertrude Stein fue una escritora estadounidense de novelas, poesía y teatro. Nació en West Allegheny, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania y fue criada en Oakland, California. En 1903, Stein se trasladó a París, haciendo de Francia su hogar por el resto de su vida. Stein es considerada una pionera de la literatura modernista. Su obra rompió con la narrativa lineal y las convenciones temporales del Siglo XIX. Stein era, también, conocida como una importante coleccionista de arte moderno.
En 1933, Stein publicó sus memorias de París, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, escritas desde el punto de vista de Toklas, su compañera de vida. El libro se convirtió en un best-seller, transformando la relativa "oscuridad literaria" de Stein en una figura de culto a la luz que ganó la atención general.[1]
Frases Gertrude Stein
„We are always the same age inside.“
— Gertrude Stein
As quoted in The American Treasury, 1455-1955 (1955) edited by Clifton Fadiman, p. 946
„It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work.“
— Gertrude Stein
Context: It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America.
Ch. 2
„A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.“
— Gertrude Stein
Context: A beauty is not suddenly in a circle. It comes with rapture. A great deal of beauty is rapture. A circle is a necessity. Otherwise you would see no one. We each have our circle.
"A Circular Play," from Last Operas and Plays (1949) [written in 1920]
„Always it comes very slowly the completed understanding of it, the repeating each one does to tell it the whole history of the being in each one, always now I hear it. Always now slowly I understand it.“
— Gertrude Stein
Context: There are many that I know and I know it. They are many that I know and they know it. They are all of them themselves and they repeat it and I hear it. Always I listen to it. Slowly I come to understand it. Many years I listened and did not know it. I heard it, I understood it some, I did not know I heard it. They repeat themselves now and I listen to it. Every way that they do it now I hear it. Now each time very slowly I come to understand it. Always it comes very slowly the completed understanding of it, the repeating each one does to tell it the whole history of the being in each one, always now I hear it. Always now slowly I understand it.
„Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear.“
— Gertrude Stein
Context: Explanations are clear but since no one to whom a thing is explained can connect the explanations with what is really clear, therefore clear explanations are not clear. Now this is a simple thing that anybody who has ever argued or quarreled knows perfectly well is a simple thing, only when they read it they do not understand it because they do not see that understanding and believing are not the same thing.
Ch. 4
„One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.“
— Gertrude Stein
Context: Would I if I could by pushing a button would I kill five thousand Chinamen if I could save my brother from anything. Well I was very fond of my brother and I could completely imagine his suffering and I replied that five thousand Chinamen were something I could not imagine and so it was not interesting.
One has to remember that about imagination, that is when the world gets dull when everybody does not know what they can or what they cannot really imagine.
Ch. 3
„From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional.“
— Gertrude Stein
Context: From the very nature of progress, all ages must be transitional. If they were not, the world would be at a stand-still and death would speedily ensue. It is one of the tamest of platitudes but it is always introduced by a flourish of trumpets.
"Form and Intelligibility," from The Radcliffe Manuscripts (1949); written in 1894 as an undergraduate at Radcliffe College
„All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation...“
— Gertrude Stein
Context: All of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation... You have no respect for anything. You drink yourselves to death.
Statement quoted by Ernest Hemingway in A Moveable Feast (1964) Ch. 3, it had also provided the epigraph to The Sun Also Rises (1926).
„Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.“
— Gertrude Stein
Reflections on the Atom Bomb (1946)
